I'm led to believe that for electronics, this trend towards positive change reinforces the suspicion that electronics burn-in is very much a matter of the mind.
What about mechanical (speaker, etc) break in? Is this a double standard where always positive amp break in means plecebo while always positive mechanical break in is fact? No. The whole point is that they are different things, and should be called different things.
Mechanical should be called break in because things actually break out of rigidity, while burn should refer to electronics since people think capacitors BURN or something....
Why are those always positive, even though the drivers actually change? Because, speakers and headphones are designed and developed to sound the way they do after the initial loosening of the transducers, which means speaker/headphone break in is very much a design of the unit, and is accounted for since the process is relatively quick and neither the designer nor the consumer really has much time to do anything because speaker break in happens the moment it is used so it is a paradox- it is impossible to test speakers before the break in because the second you test it, it is broken in.
Thats why people should not bundle speaker/headphone mechanical break-in with electronic burn in. Capacitors don't "break in" over time. They just break. Or burn.